This is a build we've been extremely excited about finally releasing. After a LOT of hard work, our first publicly playable build of Onslaught Mode is ready to be tested by you awesome people! Try this 4 player cooperative mode online, in LAN, or even play by yourself! It scales appropriately, so you are capable of playing this solo, though it will be more fun with friends. Try playing on the new map, Blockskrieg, for an easy-mode intro to game, or if you're feeling mighty brave, try playing it on PAX Level 6. You'll see why that is one of the hardest Onslaught levels in the game...

There is one catch. You must have a pre-order account to play this mode. We need to start shying away from our 100% free-to-play model, to gear up for our full, paid release in January. So if you want to play this amazingly epic, cooperative mode, you'll have to pony up a measly $10. The next release with ground vehicles will follow the same thing. To access the upcoming THREE ground vehicles that will be released in the next patch, you will need a pre-order account.

There are two other awesome features finally in too. Private messaging and FRIENDS LIST! You can now see when your friends are online, what server they are in, and private message them to tell them to come play with you! This is step one towards the implementation of the clan system. Right now it's all using slash commands (/friend, /msg, etc...), but eventually we'll have an easy to use UI.

Here are the full patch notes (also, get the full list of slash commands here):

0.33 Beta 12 - You asked for Zombies - we give you spiders (and more)* Onslaught mode - our survival mode. ** AVAILABLE TO PREORDERS ONLY ** Onslaught mode can be played in single player or networked with up to 4 players* Friends are now available - click Clans/Stats to add friends... coming soon* Private messaging using /msg {name} in game and in lobby *** KNOWN ISSUE: this doesn't work for usernames containing punctuation **** New Map - Blockskreig* forceHiDef command line parameter to allow older machines to attempt to run the game - it wont work for everyone. Just add forceHiDef (case sensitive to the end of the shortcut you use to run the game. *** Unsupported, use at your own risk, dont complain if it crashes your game, it will probably run slowly, no whining allowed **** Lots of optimisations * Lots of bug fixes.

This is a big update. We haven't released something like 3 weeks, so there's lots of new, awesome stuff in game! Plus, to commemorate the release of Halo 4, we organized with some Minecraft creators to bring in their re-creations of some famous Halo 1 and 2 maps. You'll have to actually play Guncraft to see which ones though ;). Here's the change-log of epic features for the new build!

0.30 Beta 11 - Anyone for Spleefing?* Spleef mode and 2 new spleef levels - let us see your designs!* Siege mode reinvented. Be the first team to build your trebuchet to win!* Lava mode - 'dead' players now have limited griefing abilities on live players. They can delete 1 block every 10 seconds. Grief away!* Some new maps inspired by.... well you work it out :-)* Grenades do more damage - they should kill more often. AoE for glue/gunk increased* Miner bonus - Swords being able to place prefabs has been replaced with the drill now becoming automatic.* Hopefully a fix for the sound 'popping' - again let us know* Field of view slider* You can disable swear word filter if you choose. (Note that we will still kick and ban people who abuse others/cross the line)* Lots of memory optimizations - hopefully less Out Of Memory crashes* Many other crash bugs fixed too... - Including a couple in standalone server - infinite jetpack fuel fixed - sprint parachute sprint exploit also gone